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TRIBEWORK is about consuming the process of life, the journey, together.

Saturday, June 2, 2012

When Love Just Won’t Work

“You can’t
make your heart feel something it won’t.”

~Bonnie Raitt,

I Can’t
Make You Love Me (1991)

Love is a game that two people
play, and one cannot do for the other what the other won’t do. This is
incredibly sad news for the infatuated, the lonely, the fatigued, the
neglected, and the abused. They are controlled; i.e., from without. Love, in
this way, is only good when we are in control.

When love just won’t work there is
a shattering reality that we cannot bear, but one that will not go away. It
remains there waiting patiently for us to give it more than a fleeting glance.
Then there is a process of grieving; of love had but now gone, or perhaps love
that once promised but never came. Whatever it is, it is loss we feel.

Within my realm of experience
there are few people who haven’t been touched deeply by the scourge of love
gone wrong; a love that didn’t work out.

The Corpus Of Emotion In Love

Something that takes us to the
zenith of both exhilaration and despair, love, especially as it relates to love
gone wrong, leaves us reeling for what to do. It sends us out on a journey,
without lunch, and we depart without sight of the destination. It’s a journey
we do not want to take. Yet we have no choice—or it seems that way.

The total gamut of emotion in
love, especially as it goes wrong, the full compendium, is as big as the stars.

In the early going, where love’s
gone wrong, life is hell. Living like we have part of us severed, a part linked
with our heart, seems numbing yet just cruel. We have lost, or lost control
over, a vital part of our identities. Surely how this feels is worse than
death... surely! Surely death couldn’t be any worse. But still, there is too
much to live for; the hope, however distant, remains. We are desperate to
change our reality, but we dream one hundred times a day about something we
can’t have. Little wonder we become depressed.

The Redemptive Qualities In Love Gone
Wrong

At such a shocking time we can be
forgiven for losing sight of hope.

The reality is we lose sight of
hope irregularly but frequently during such a phase. But there are redemptive
qualities in love gone wrong, if we can just hold on with some form of brave openness
of heart.

The paradox is we may realise a
strange comfort within our forlornness. Our sense for jealousy, that entrenches
us in bitterness, may compete with the openness required to go a new way. We
need to endeavour to get over the negativity, but never forcefully. We just
need to perceive hope, however hard that is.

But just like our love went wrong,
and beyond our control, we cannot force our hearts to accept something they
won’t. All we can do is place the redemptive quality of love ever before the
heart, such that it would entertain a new way of feeling.

The heart may feel differently
when it’s ready.

Things can and do change regarding
love, and the grief process involved in love gone wrong. We do recover,
eventually. And when we do, the depths of pain have enriched our sense for
love. We are somehow better for the experience.

***

When love has gone wrong we
struggle for hope. We enter our dark night of the soul. Yet in those dark
nights is contained meaning for future love, if we have the resilience of hope
compelling us to endure. And endure we must. We must hope for something better.